Surprise Lilies photo taken on 2/29/08.Bits of broken glass and pottery shards.
Multitudes of nails, a few horseshoes and numerous other rusty metal fragments.
Bulbs planted in random locations around the yard.
People have lived on our little plot of land for a long time.
We find tiny traces of their lives almost every time we dig
-- and, sometimes, after a hard rain.
It's impossible to know very much about the folks who lived here before us from the rusted and broken bits they left behind,
except we know that someone among the previous inhabitants liked flowers
and planted bulbs.
The location of the plants probably once fit into the overall layout of cabin, fences and outbuildings, but all those structures are long gone.
We still enjoy the flowers, though.
11 comments:
Marvin, I bet the surprises you had when you first moved there are now old friends that pop up every spring.
What you call surprise lillies we call naked ladies here. Do all of yours bloom pink? Where I used to live I had some red ones. They didn't last long. Just a few years. The red ones must not be as tough as the pink ones.
That would really stir my interests and I would be digging when ever I had the time. ha!
Dear Marvin,
I like to think long after I am gone my gardens will remain. I see at least the daffodils will!
I also have Surprise Lilies that are coming up. They were a gift from a fellow gardener years ago.
I look for the greens of the lilies and the daffs in March. Grren is the color of hope at my house!
Sherry
Your place is something like mine. I was told by an old, old, man, that this site where my house is was once a swamp and on the edge was an old barn. I guess it was as I have also found lots of rusted things but nothing easy to recognize. And no flowers.
Glad to see your spring returning properly...we are in the mid-thirties finally...whee.
Very lovely. :)
Lisa: All of our lilies are pink. Surprisingly, none of them bloomed last year. I say "surprisingly" because we got more rain than normal during June and July -- not floods, just more rain. Could it be that there's something about the heat and dryness of late June and early July that triggers blooming? I dunno. All have come back up this spring -- including the ones Jo had to move because of that water line -- so we'll see what happens this year.
Tom W: Treasure hunting? I'll tell you that a metal detector would go crazy around our place. The only problem is: All the occupants of this plot of land -- including the current residents -- were poor and didn't have anything of monetary value to leave behind.
Sherry: Right you are. All signs of new growth are welcome in early spring. The daffodils bloom long before the surprise lilies, of course, but the lilies break ground first. I've seen them covered with ice many times, but it doesn't seem to hurt them. They're tough.
Abraham: The official county road now ends at our place, but the road itself actually keeps going -- if you're walking, riding a horse or have four-wheel drive. I've been told that this was once the main road down off Star Mountain before the state built a highway elsewhere. I don't know if that's true or not, but it could be. I've walked the road and there are signs of human habitation (like old rock walls) in various places.
Lisa: I hate those side trips back into winter.
Lana: Thanks.
A lovely way to leave one's 'mark.'
One sees an old lilac bush/tree in the country some times... and it's pretty sure that it was by the stoop of a long-gone farm house....
I wouldn't be too sure about a lack of "real" treasure...you know how people used to bury money in mason jars in the yard way back. I think it was a distrust of banks after the depression, and then there were bandits who robbed trains that may have left a stash. You just never know... :)
BTW, I'm relieved to hear that your surprise lillies didn't bloom last year, cuz' mine didn't either, even after a ton of spring foliage.
Mari-Nanci: I agree. Much better than graffiti.
Lisa: Strange that both of our lilies surprised us by not blooming. There must be a scientific explanation -- like, maybe, a retrograde alignment of the stars.
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